by M. J. Pullen
Rebecca nibbled at the remnants of the last wing and debated ordering another basket. She had to admit they were good, especially for a hole-in-the-wall in the middle of nowhere, Alabama. A few more people had begun filing in while she ate—a group of men in fishing vests and muddy boots, some kids in their early twenties dressed in khakis and matching blue polos, and a few stray women in tight jeans and low-cut tops accompanied by guys in various shades of button-up plaid.
When Rebecca was growing up, the town had hardly been able to support the weekend dance hall that only served soda and doubled as a senior activity center during the day. She wasn’t sure how long Dickie’s had been around, but it seemed pretty popular, even on a Sunday night. They had turned up some music—country, of course; she even saw a cowboy hat and boots glide by the booth next to hers.
She ordered another beer, having nowhere to go and entirely too much energy for ten o’clock at night. This time a young guy in a tight black Dickie’s T-shirt took her order. She saw the scowling waitress mount the stage across the bar and drawl into the mike with a sudden enthusiasm, “Hey y’all—it’s time to get going on the third qualifying round of our karaoke tournament. Everybody get your ballots up at the bar if Kevin hasn’t brought ’em to you yet—remember you can only vote for three singers, and no voting twice for the same person. Even you, Miss Jeanie—we know your hand, so you can only vote for Matthew once.”
With this last comment, the waitress leaned toward a spiky-haired woman seated at one of the front tables with a younger man who must have been her son. The comment was met with laughter and a scatter of applause.
The waitress smirked and went back to her announcements. “All right, let’s kick it off with last year’s regional champ, our very own Alex Chen!”
Rebecca’s breath caught in her throat as the very same deputy who had been in her mother’s driveway earlier that day took the stage at a hop. He accepted the microphone from the waitress, who whispered something in his ear before stepping down off the stage. It was the same guy; it had to be. For one thing, there were probably a total of ten Asian men in a fifty-mile radius of this town, and for two of them to be named Alex Chen was way too much of a coincidence. Also, she recognized his boots: the same dark leather ones he’d been wearing earlier. Though now instead of the pressed khaki of the sheriff’s department, he wore broken-in jeans and a flannel shirt with a respectable white undershirt, making him look more ruddy and tan than she had noticed earlier.
Near the stage, a group of guys in cowboy hats and girls in halter tops were catcalling and whooping at him. Alex grinned at them and began to sing a lively version of “Santeria” by Sublime. Rebecca had to admit, he wasn’t bad. By the time he was halfway into the song, people had begun to clap in rhythm along with him. As he danced and sang his way through the final verse, the entire place was clapping. He could sing, but that wasn’t it. There was something about him—his smile, maybe—that just made you want to root for him.
He jumped down from the stage when the song ended, waving away the applause with a gesture, and sat down to join his friends. A couple of the guys clapped him on the back and a girl with spiky reddish-brown hair streaked in blond handed him a beer in a plastic cup. Next up was a middle-aged man with a sandy beard and large beer belly, which was held in by a belt buckle the size of a dessert plate in the shape of the number three. Rebecca was surprised when he broke into a very tender version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Sitting alone in a bar where she knew almost no one, Rebecca found it hard to keep from watching the deputy. He laughed and traded draft beer salutes with the people around him, one or two of whom looked familiar to Rebecca. She assumed they had also gone to high school together—probably with her brother, since she didn’t recognize any of them as members of her own class. Then again, she had never been particularly close with anyone in high school. She tried again to remember, without staring, what Alex had looked like back then. In this case, it was helpful that there had been only one Asian family in town. David Chen had been in Rebecca’s class—that had to be Alex’s younger brother or maybe a cousin. She didn’t remember David being so outgoing and personable, though. Or so attractive.
She shook her head and looked down at her nearly empty wings basket. She fished the last piece of limp celery out of a puddle of hot sauce and nibbled it uncertainly. This is not a fun visit, she reminded herself. I have to figure out what to do with my mom. And besides …
Rebecca remembered the pitying look on Deputy Chen’s face as he tried to get her to roll down the car window earlier this afternoon and told her about her mother’s situation. The idea of sneaking out the Dickie’s side door came to mind. But soon the kid in the tight black T-shirt had brought her the second beer. “Did you want a list?”
“A list?”
“Songs,” he said. He gestured toward the stage. “In case you want to sing?”
“Oh, God. No, thank you.”
The guy shrugged and walked away. Rebecca did not even have a chance to ask him for the bill. She glanced across the room at Alex, who suddenly seemed to feel her eyes on him. He smiled broadly and waved at her, and then turned to say something to one of his buddies, a pasty guy in a cowboy hat with wobbly jowls, who turned to look at her, too.
Great. That’s the crazy girl, you know, the cat lady’s daughter. She wondered if Daughter of the Cat Lady would soon replace Poor Cory Williamson’s Sister as her label in this little town. Not exactly a promotion.
She stared into her beer bottle, thinking irrationally that it had something floating in it, and when she looked up, Alex was on his way over to her table. Too late to run away now.
“Hey,” he said, sliding into the seat across from her without an invitation. “How you holding up?”
“Did it ever occur to you,” Rebecca said haughtily, “that maybe I don’t want to discuss my personal family business with a total stranger?”
Deputy Chen’s smile did not waver. “I’m not a total stranger. You may not remember me from high school, but I remember you.”
“I know,” Rebecca said. “Cory’s Little Sister.”
“Not just that,” he said. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to intrude on your personal business. My apologies.”
“No problem,” she said, hoping he might get up and walk back to his friends.
“So let’s talk about something else. What are you singing tonight?”
“Oh, no. No, no, no. I do not sing. I can’t.” It was true. She was a terrible singer. Even her roommates had gently asked her to stop singing in the shower junior year.
“Everyone can sing,” Alex said.
“I hate that expression. People say it all the time, but I know for a fact it isn’t true. I’m living proof.”
“I doubt that,” he said. He was looking at her in a sort of appraising way, like he was sizing her up.
“So how long have you been a police officer?” she asked, changing the subject.
“I’m a sheriff’s deputy,” he corrected. “About ten years, off and on.”
“Wow. That’s kind of a dangerous job.”
He shrugged. “It can be, for sure. But this isn’t exactly downtown Atlanta. Around here, a couple of people drive off without paying for gas or hunt deer without a license and it’s a crime wave.”
Rebecca sensed he was downplaying the seriousness of his job, but she didn’t press him. She remembered the kind Atlanta PD officer, Bonita, who had helped Suzanne so much the year before, and had been killed by a drunk driver while making a routine traffic stop.
He signaled the boy in the tight T-shirt. “Now your job is kinda dangerous, too, right? Kevin, can you get me another round, please, and one for the lady?”
“No thanks,” she said to Kevin. “How do you know about my job?”
Alex smiled, a little sheepish. “Your dad’s really proud of you. He and I go fishing together once in a while.”
“You do?” How did she not know this?
“Yeah,” he said. “Well, not so much since he and Sonia…”
He trailed off. Rebecca shifted in her seat. Apparently there were no secrets in this town, at least where her family was concerned. “Ugh,” she said. “It’s so embarrassing. Are they—are we—the town laughingstocks or something?”
Alex laughed. “Hardly. People do some embarrassing shit in this town. My dad and my uncle once got in a fight in the front yard and threw chicken feet at each other.”
She clamped her hand over her mouth in spite of herself. “Not really!”
“Yep,” he said. “That was probably the year after you left. I was in Birmingham at UAB, but my brother David was still living here. You remember David?”
“Yeah,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t press her for specifics. David had always been a quiet kid who hung out in the band room a lot, if she remembered correctly. Rebecca was not even sure they’d ever had a conversation.
“He’s in New York now,” Alex said proudly. “Music composer on Broadway—I go up to visit him every spring. Thanks, Kevin.”
The waiter set down two beers in plastic cups, and two shot glasses with a light brown liquid nearly spilling over the tops. “We’re out of Bud Light in the bottle,” he said to Rebecca, as if this were the only important piece of information.
She gaped at him, and then looked at Alex, who sniffed a shot glass. “Whew! What’s with the tequila, Kev?”
“Oh, that. That’s from Grier and them.” He motioned with a jerk of his head toward the table where Alex had been sitting earlier. The guy with the jowls raised his own matching shot glass to them in a salute. Alex responded in kind, and downed the tequila in one gulp.
Rebecca smiled stiffly and left her glass where it was. She waited for Alex to chastise her for this, but he simply glanced at her glass and shook his head. “Crazy guys.”
“Work friends?” she asked.
“Well, yeah, some of them. Grier’s a deputy and Kenny over there is a paramedic. He works in Gadsden part-time and then with the fire department here part-time. Earl drives a tow truck. So we all kind of intersect at work. Off duty tonight, obviously. Plus we all went to Oreville High at one point or another, just different years.”
“And the little blonde?” He had named the men but not the women in his company.
“Oh, yeah. Um, Bethany is one of our dispatchers. Kathy, next to her, is her friend; she’s a bank teller, I think.” He pointed to each one in turn. “And the other brunette is Tanya; she works at the hair salon downtown. You two might remember each other. Actually, I think she was in your class.”
“Tanya Boozer?” Rebecca looked again at the brunette in the short-cropped hair with blond streaks, trying to recognize the cheerleader who had overlooked her in high school, even at the best of times. Sure enough, there she was, surrounded by a good bit of hair product and a gratifying extra layer of flesh. “Wow.”
“Time changes us all, I guess. I keep forgetting how long you’ve been away.” Alex was talking to her like they were old friends.
“So you go fishing with my dad?”
He nodded. “The post office was down the street from my parents’ restaurant, and he used to come in for lunch a lot when I worked there in the summers. They moved the restaurant a while ago, next to the Winn-Dixie on Highway 9. Anyway, when your dad found out I went fishing at sunrise most days at Lake Ofeskokee, he decided to start tagging along. I guess you would say we’re friends.”
“That’s nice,” Rebecca said dully.
“He never shuts up about you, though. If I have to hear one more time how many exotic places you get to fly with your job…” He nudged her foot gently under the table. It was a boyish gesture. But he had a man’s face—full eyebrows and dark, serious eyes. The wrinkles at the corners had been exacerbated, she guessed, by all the time he spent outside squinting in the sun, making his eyes look even more narrow and intense. He had a tiny scar over his lip. She glanced at the untouched tequila and took a fiery sip.
“You’d never know it from my end,” she said.
“What?”
“I almost never hear from Dad,” she said. “Except when I call him. And even then half the time Sonia answers.”
“I take it you’re not a fan?”
“It’s not her, really. Well, I guess it’s partly her, but it’s just … he and my mom aren’t even divorced.”
“They probably never will be,” Alex said. “He loves her too much, even now.”
“How do you— You know what? I’d rather not talk about it.”
She quickly downed the rest of the tequila and slammed the glass on the table. There was something bubbling inside her—grievous and hollow. Something about Alex irked her—whether it was his presumptuousness to invade her space at every turn today, or the fact that he seemed to be trying—successfully—to replace her father’s lost son, she did not know. Kevin the waiter was passing by, and she gestured for him to bring another round. Alex raised an eyebrow.
“Unless you need to get back to your friends?” she said. A challenge. “I mean, you did come all the way over here and start needling me for personal information that’s absolutely none of your business. You don’t even know me! But now you’ve got me drinking tequila and running my mouth. So don’t tell me the big bad officer—”
“Deputy.”
“Deputy. What’s the difference, anyway?” He started to answer, but she plowed on. “Don’t tell me you’re going to back away now that you’re getting what you came over here for. Going to run back over there and get on the stage and sing?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said lightly. He was laughing at her, she knew. “Unless you want to sing with me? A little ‘Islands in the Stream’?”
She ignored that. “So, let’s talk about you, Deputy Chen,” she said, as Kevin put two more tequila shots in front of them. She hardly knew who this woman was, talking with her mouth, but she could not seem to stop. “What skeletons are in your closet?”
“That would take a while,” he said, still wearing a smile that no longer reached his eyes. “And maybe a few more of these.”
He lifted the shot glass and waited for her to clink hers against it. Even though they both drank at the same time, he did not move his gaze from her, even when he put the glass on the table. “You’re right,” he said. “I was intruding and I’m sorry. I just assumed you and your dad were in touch more. I can tell you don’t remember me, which is understandable, given your move to Atlanta and … everything. Plus, to be honest, I wasn’t that memorable in high school. When you’re one of three Asian kids in a basically white town, you try to fly under the radar as much as possible.”
“I guess I didn’t think of that,” Rebecca said.
He shrugged. “It’s a little more diverse these days. We minorities are up to like almost four percent or something. At this rate, we’ll have a Taco Bell in fifteen years. Fingers crossed.”
Rebecca was not sure what to say. She thought he was kidding but wasn’t sure. Was he making fun of her?
He grinned, getting up from the table. “Come with me and say hi to everyone. They’re all curious about you.”
Rebecca had never known anyone to be curious about her. Tonight she had no particular interest in meeting “everyone,” or getting closer to the karaoke stage, but Alex stood with his hand extended to her and she could not think of a polite refusal. Her head swam a bit when she stood, but he bolstered her with his outstretched arm.
“Cool?” he asked.
A combination of warmth, giddiness, and utter panic rose in her chest. But between Alex Chen’s inviting eyes, guilt about her rudeness, and the smoothing power of tequila, she allowed herself to be led toward whatever disaster awaited. “Cool,” she lied. “I’m cool.”
12
In the dream, she was swimming. A pool, in the middle of her mother’s living room, grown to the size of a football field. She was wearing a cheerleader’s uniform, the wet weight of it pulling her down. Giant roache
s hissed around her, skittering across her arms and up the back of her neck, through her hair. A man’s voice boomed in the distance, like a loudspeaker, but the man was muttering, and she could not understand him.
She tried to reach the side, follow the echoing voice, but she could not move and it faded. An airline mask hung above her, just out of reach. A familiar voice—Valerie, maybe?—was close by now, reciting the safety features of the DC-9-50. Rebecca screamed, but Valerie just got louder. It was all going black. A tiny circle of gray sky was all that remained above her and she gasped desperately for air. It would not come. She was suffocating.
Rebecca sat bolt upright, throwing the pillow from her face halfway across the room. It took a beat to realize that she was back in her hotel room, and that it was 6 A.M. Another beat to realize that she was not alone. He was standing by the door, silhouetted so that she could see he was wearing jeans but no shirt, hunched over and talking softly on a cell phone. She gathered the sheet around her, realizing in the process that she wore only underwear herself. Ugh. The granny panties. Dear God, what have I done?
Alex Chen put the phone in his pocket and pulled on a white undershirt before he crossed to her, smiling. She tried to ignore the lovely way the cotton clung to his muscled chest. “Anybody ever tell you that you punch and kick like an Ultimate Fighter in your sleep? It’s like trying to sleep in a boxing ring.” He handed her a glass of water and a couple of small brown pills from the nightstand. “Take these. You’ll thank me later.”
She did as he suggested, awkwardly trying to keep her body covered with the sheet at the same time. Her head was splitting and her mouth tasted like a drunk possum had died in it. Alex took the glass back and handed Rebecca her bag. “Here,” he said. “I know better than to dig through a woman’s purse. Can you get your keys out for me, please? Grier’s outside and I’m going to go back and get your car.”